Demon Hunter Skills – Categories

Before we get into the actual skills list, you should know that all of the Diablo 3 Demon Hunter skills are broken down into multiple categories: Primary, Secondary, Defensive, Archery, Devices, and Shadow. We will break down the Demon Hunter skills into the 6 category types as this is how you will find the skills arranged in game.

The game recommends that you pick one skill of each type, but I recommend going into elective mode (open up the menu and turn it on) so you can pick your own skill set based on the information below.

Instead of using these generic category names which are more often about naming the type of attack than its actual function, you should think of your skills as belonging to one of three categories: Hatred Generator, Hatred Spender, and Discipline Spender. Your active skills either generate hatred, spend hatred, or spend discipline and you will want some of each in order to maximize your resource pools.

Demon Hunter Skills – Primary

Primary skills are all Hatred generators that you can use to help get your Hatred back. These tends to be slightly weaker than other abilities but are necessary as they give you offensive power when you need to regenerate Hatred.

• Hungering Arrow. Unlocked at level 1. Generates 3 Hatred. This fires a magic arrow which deals 115% weapon damage that automatically seeks out targets (like Guided Arrow from Diablo 2). Additionally, this ability has a 35% chance to pierce through targets and can pierce through a single target multiple times, making it a great single target spell.
• Entangling Shot. Unlocked at level 3. Generates 3 Hatred. Fires an arrow which deals 75% of weapon damage as shadow to a single target and then snares that target and up to 1 nearby enemy, reducing their movement speed by 60% for 2 seconds.
• Bola Shot. Unlocked at level 11. Generates 3 Hatred. Fires an explosive bola which sticks to the target and blows up 1 second later, dealing 130% weapon damage as fire to the target and 110% weapon damage as fire to enemies within 7 yards. This is your best AoE-oriented Hatred generating Diablo 3 Demon Hunter skill.
• Grenades. Unlocked at level 15. Generates 3 Hatred. Toss out 3 grenades which explode for 95% weapon damage as fire each. Only melee-oriented Hatred generator for the Demon Hunter.

 

Demon Hunter Skills – Secondary

The “secondary” category simply refers to some of your early Hatred spenders. These tend to be not very flashy and typically cost less Hatred spenders.

• Impale. Unlocked at level 2. Costs 25 Hatred. Throw a knife that deals 250% weapon damage.
• Rapid Fire. Unlocked at level 5. Costs 20 Hatred initially and then 10 Hatred per “attack” while channeling. Deals 6 mini ranged attacks which add up to 228% weapon damage per round based on your weapon’s attack speed. You are deducted 10 Hatred based on your weapon speed. If your weapon attacks one time per second, you lose 10 Hatred per second while channeling.
• Chakram. Unlocked at level 12. Costs 10 Hatred. Throw a swirling Chakram which deals 150% weapon damage to enemies along its path. Has a strange swirling path, making it somewhat unreliable but has a low Hatred cost.
• Elemental Arrow. Unlocked at level 20. Costs 20 Hatred. Deals 155% of weapon damage as fire to all enemies it hits (it pierces in a straight line).

Demon Hunter Skills – Defensive

Defensive abilities are designed to help the Demon Hunter kite enemies and avoid damage. These tend to cost Discipline rather than Hatred and many do not do damage directly.

• Caltrops. Unlocked at level 4. Costs 6 Discipline. Place a trap on the ground which springs when an enemy gets close to it. The trap slows enemies within 12 yards by 60% and lasts for 6 seconds.
• Smoke Screen. Unlocked at level 8. Costs 14 Discipline. Vanish into a wall of smoke, becoming invisible for 2 seconds.
• Shadow Power. Unlocked at level 16. Costs 14 Discipline. Gain 20% of all damage done as life for 3 seconds.

Demon Hunter Skills – Hunting

Hunting skills are like Defensive skills in that they cost Discipline but instead of being designed to avoid damage, most of them are buff-oriented and allow you to do more damage indirectly by using your Discipline.

• Vault. Unlocked at level 9. Costs 8 Discipline. Tumble 35 yards ahead to avoid damage. This basically lets you roll forward about 35 yards at what I would guess is about 300% of regular movement speed. Good for getting distance or avoiding projectiles.
• Preparation. Unlocked at level 13. 45 second cooldown. Instantly restores all Discipline on use.
• Companion. Unlocked at level 17. Costs 10 Discipline. Summons a Raven companion to fight with you which periodically hits enemies for 30% of weapon damage.
• Marked for Death. Unlocked at level 21. Costs 3 Discipline. Marks an enemy; marked enemies take 12% more damage from all sources (including allies) for the next 30 seconds.

Demon Hunter Skills – Devices

Devices include non-traditional weaponry and traps that deal damage in some form or another. These tend to cost Hatred.

• Evasive Fire. Unlocked at level 14. Generates 4 Hatred, Costs 4 Discipline if a backflip is used. Fires an arrow that deals 125% weapon damage. If an enemy is within 10 yards in front of you, you backflip 15 yards directly back from where your character is facing.
• Fan of Knives. Unlocked at level 17. Costs 20 Hatred. 10 second cooldown. Deals 320% weapon damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Enemies hit with the knives have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 2 seconds.
• Spike Trap. Unlocked at level 17. Costs 15 Hatred. Lay a trap which arms after 1.2 seconds (meaning it will not explode for at least 1.2 seconds). When triggered, it deals 275% of weapon damage to all enemies within 8 yards. You cannot have more than 3 Spike Traps active at one time.
• Sentry. Unlocked at level 25. Costs 10 Discipline. Lay a turret on the ground which fires at nearby enemies for 20% of weapon damage. Lasts 30 seconds.

Demon Hunter Skills – Archery

The skills in the Archery section are all bow-based skills and tend to cost a lot of Hatred and have strong effects. They also tend to be Area of Effect oriented.

• Strafe. Unlocked at level 19. Costs 15 Hatred. Deal 120% of weapon damage while moving at 65% of movement speed. This means that you can effectively run away from snared enemies while using this Demon Hunter skill.
• Multishot. Unlocked at level 22. Costs 40 Hatred. Sprays arrows in a wide arc, dealing 165% of weapon damage to all enemies hit by its arrows.
• Cluster Arrow. Unlocked at level 27. Costs 50 Hatred. Fires an explosive arrow which deals 200% of weapon damage as fire to enemies near the explosion and then explodes into a bunch of mini-grenades which deal 100% of weapon damage as fire each.
• Rain of Vengeance. Unlocked at level 30. 45 second cooldown. Calls down arrows over a massive area to deal 75% weapon damage per tick (based on attack speed) to all enemies within the area for 5 seconds.

Demon Hunter Skills – Passive

There are 15 total Diablo 3 Demon hunter passive skills:

• Tactical Advantage. Unlocked at level 10. Whenever you Vault, Smoke Screen, or backflip with Evasive Fire, you gain 60% movement speed for 2 seconds. Not useful unless you need to do some serious kiting against a very fast enemy.
• Thrill of the Hunt. Unlocked at level 10. Every 10 seconds, your next bow attack will immobilize your target for 3 seconds. Not good in AoE situations, not bad against melee boss mobs.
• Vengeance. Unlocked at level 12. Increases your maximum Hatred by 25; health globes restore 20 Hatred and 2 Discipline. Not very useful; there are easier ways to get back Hatred and Discipline.
• Steady Aim. Unlocked at level 16. All damage is increased by 20% when no enemies are within 10 yards. Given that you are typically at range as a Demon Hunter, this 20% bonus damage is practically mandatory for most builds and situations.
• Cull the Weak. Unlocked at level 20. Damage against slowed enemies is increased by 15%. Just like Steady Aim, this is a huge buff that you should consider using if you are using attacks which call for snares.
• Night Stalker. Unlocked at level 20. Critical hits have a chance to restore 1 Discipline. The percentage of the chance is not displayed in the tooltip. If you needed Discipline, Perfectionist would likely be a better bet unless the proc rate is near 100%.
• Brooding. Unlocked at level 25. If you have not taken damage in 3 seconds, you gain 1% of your life back per second. Not enough life to be worthwhile in my opinion. If you are able to avoid taking damage for 3 seconds, you can stay alive long enough for your potion timer to come back around.
• Hot Pursuit. Unlocked at level 27. Whenever you are at full Hatred, movement speed is increased by 15%. Good for running past enemies in search of certain things or going from one place to another, but keeping your Hatred full for a movement speed bonus is not really worth it since most of your good abilities cost Hatred. Like Tactical Advantage, likely only good versus extremely fast mobs that you cannot afford to let hit you.
• Archery. Unlocked at level 30. Gives a bonus based on your currently equipped weapon. Bows increase damage by 15%, Crossbows increase critical hit damage by 50%, Hand Crossbows give you a 10% bonus to your critical hit chance. Hard for anyone to pass this up, practically mandatory.
• Numbing Traps. Unlocked at level 30. Enemies hit by Fan of Knives, Spike Trap, or Caltrops have their damage reduced by 25% for 3 seconds. Shines in group play where the 25% damage reduction really means something. Also useful for melee Demon Hunters as this almost as much damage reduction as the Barbarian and Monk get. Caltrops can be buffed to give you 10% damage for standing in it, this makes it worthwhile to keep up all the time as well.
• Perfectionist. Unlocked at level 35. Reduces the Discipline cost of all skills by 10%. Not my favorite ability, but you may find yourself working with a build that requires a lot of Discipline, such as in PvP.
• Custom Engineering. Unlocked at level 40. Increases the duration of Caltrops, Marked for Death, Spike Trap, and Sentry by 100%. The real interesting thing here is the increase in duration in Caltrops, perhaps useful for
• Grenadier. Unlocked at level 45. Increases the Hatred generated from Grenades by 2 and reduces the Hatred cost of Cluster Arrow by 10. Upon death, you drop a giant grenade that explodes for 614% of weapon damage as Fire. Definitely a good passive skill for melee Demon Hunters as with Tinkerer you can get your hatred regeneration from grenades up to 8 per cast. Melee Demon Hunters primarily rely on hatred so its a good idea to have a fast generator.
• Sharpshooter. Unlocked at level 50. You gain 3% critical chance every second. This bonus resets 1 second after you successfully critical hit. Not nearly as much damage increase as you will get from Archery, Steady Aim, or Cull of the Weak (unless you never snare).
• Ballistics. Unlocked at level 55. Increases damage done by rockets by 50%. This is a big damage boost, but naturally you need to be making heavy use of rocket abilities to get a lot of damage out of it.

Demon Hunter Best Passive Skills

While there can be a case made for all the skills in certain situations, in my opinion your best overall passives for most builds are going to be Steady Aim, Cull the Weak, and Archery. These three each increase your raw damage output by significant amounts.

If you want to use a third trait, odds are your best one to swap out will be Cull the Weak. The reason is that Archery is always active, Steady Aim should be active most of the time, and Cull the Weak will only be active some of the time. If you have great gear and do not need to do much kiting, you can consider dropping Cull the Weak altogether, though in most situations I think you are going to want it.

If you use the three damage boosting traits, remember that Web Shot (a Rapid Fire rune) is great at slowing down enemies, allowing you to get that 15% bonus damage from Cull the Weak. With 20% from Steady Aim, 15% from Cull the Weak, and 15% from Archery, you can be dishing out tons of bonus damage with these traits.

Of course, there are also some great Discipline-related Diablo 3 Demon Hunter passive skills that you might want to break out if you are PvPing or are playing in a group and need to provide support.

Finally, melee Demon Hunters might want to pick up Numbing Traps, Custom Engineering, and Grenadier, as these three D3 passive skills really synergize well a melee-oriented DH.

Demon Hunter Attributes

In order to max out your damage, max out your Dexterity and weapon damage as a priority. Be sure to get enough Vitality and damage-to-life conversion as  you need to stay alive. Seek out +damage and increased attack speed on your jewelry. As you reach higher levels, mix in critical rating and hatred regeneration as your gear begins to get more stats on it.

Pick up Magic Find and Gold Find as it is convenient, but seek an even balance between bonus loot and killing speed, as you can definitely over-do the magic and gold find at higher levels. By following the recommendations of this Diablo 3 Demon Hunter stats guide, you can be sure you are using the right equipment for your class.

Demon Hunter Stats – Primary Attributes

There are four primary stats – Dexterity, Strength, Intelligence, and Vitality. For the Demon Hunter, Dexterity is the primary stat. Each point in Dexterity increases the Demon Hunter’s damage by 1%. Dexterity also increases the Demon Hunter’s dodge rate.

This is a flat relationship; each extra point of Dexterity means an extra percentage point of damage. You will want to maximize Dexterity as much as you can as this is what primarily determines your damage as a Demon Hunter.

Vitality increases the max health of the Demon Hunter. You will need to keep up minimum amounts of Vitality as a Demon Hunter in order to survive taking damage. However, the Demon Hunter has more escapes and avoidance tactics than any other class in the game.

As a result, the Demon Hunter needs less Vitality than other classes; just enough to survive ranged attackers rather than worrying about melee hits. If you are getting hit by melee attacks, you either are not being careful or simply are not playing the class right.

Strength and Intelligence do little for the Demon Hunter – each point of strength increases its armor by 1 and intelligence modestly increases resist rates of elemental attacks. However, these bonuses provided are very low.

Gear that contains these stats might be worthless for the Demon Hunter, but that does not make the gear worthless – these are the primary stats of other classes and increase the damage of other classes. Since these do increase the stats of other classes, items with a lot of either of these two stats may be valuable to sell on the auction house.

 

Weapon Damage and Damage Calculations

In addition to Dexterity, the other primary stat of the Demon Hunter in Diablo 3 is weapon damage. Your damage in Diablo 3 is entirely based off of a combination of the skill you use, your weapon damage, and your dexterity.

Let’s take a look at how all this plays out below. For the sake of this example, we will assume:

• You have a weapon that does 50-100 damage;
• You have 100 Dexterity;
• You are using the Cluster Arrow ability, which deals 200% weapon damage.

The calculations themselves from here are very simple. Cluster Arrow deals 200% weapon damage, which is simply two times your weapon’s damage. This turns 50-100 into 100-200 weapon damage from Cluster Arrow.

However, before that 100-200 damage is dealt, your 100 Dexterity increases your damage dealt by 100%. This means Cluster Arrow will do 200-400 damage.

The point of all this is that you need to maximize both Dexterity and weapon damage if you want to deal a lot of damage. If you have a great weapon and not very good Dexterity totals, you will not deal great damage. If you have a bad weapon and high Dexterity totals, you will not deal much damage either. You need a balance of both to be effective.

Imagine if you only had a weapon which dealt 10-20 damage in the example above but had 300 Dexterity. 10-20 damage would become 20-40 damage with Cluster Arrow. 300 Dexterity would increase that three times to 60-120 damage, much lower than the 200-400 damage above despite the generous Dexterity boost.

Attack Speed and Elemental Damage

Before moving on, we should discuss weapon attack speed and elemental damage. High DPS weapons with a fast attack speed can have lower damage numbers than lower DPS weapons with a slow attack speed. How does this figure into the calculations?

There is no normalized attack speed for weapons calculations in Diablo 3, so slower weapons usually deal a lot more damage than faster ones. However, they do attack slower naturally, which means they get less shots off.

So which is better? Neither really. Most of the time you will want to pick the higher DPS weapon if the bonus stats are equal. There is however a minute difference between the two:

• Slow weapons benefit from Hatred regeneration more, since they go through Hatred at a slower rate. If you get decent bonus Hatred Regeneration and use the Bat companion pet for bonus Hatred regeneration, you can potentially build a nearly self-sustaining Hatred set.
• Faster weapons benefit more from ability procs. Many Demon Hunter attacks can slow enemies as well as stun them. Faster weapons get more attacks off but the procs remain the same, making faster weapons better for stunning and slowing enemies.

Additionally, I think here we should mention Elemental Damage. Elemental damage is often found on weapons and in Diablo 3 it actually seems to be just as effective as raw damage. In Diablo 2, elemental damage on weapons was simply added in on the end of your attacks and not affected by Dexterity or weapon damage multipliers, making it fairly useless unless you were fighting a physical immune enemy.

In Diablo 3, this has changed. Elemental damage seems to be modified by Dexterity and skill multipliers making it just as effective as regular weapon damage.

Getting +Damage from Equipment

Since you know from the above portion of this Diablo 3 Demon Hunter stats guide that both Dexterity and Weapon Damage are important and Dexterity can be found on practically any gear slot in the game, you may be wondering how exactly to get more weapon damage.

Of course, most of your weapon damage will come from your weapons themselves – you do not need a Diablo 3 Demon Hunter stats guide to tell you that. Getting a good weapon upgrade can do more for your character than practically anything else sometimes, especially when your dexterity levels get very high. The higher your dexterity levels get, the more important each point of weapon damage becomes.

However, there are a few slots which offer weapon damage – rings and amulets. When you are leveling up, the best blue rings in the game are “Keen (ring name) of Wounding”, as these provide increased attack speed and bonus weapon damage. These result in huge DPS increases for your character.

Even better are rare items which contain a mix of all these stats such as +damage and attack speed with other useful stats like damage converted to life and increases in critical hit rate. Speaking of these secondary stats, next we will discuss the useful secondary stats for the Demon Hunter.

Demon Hunter Stats – Secondary Attributes

While maxing out Dexterity and Weapon Damage is important, there are other stats which are useful for a Demon Hunter to use in Diablo 3. Here are some of the better stats to get:

• Critical Hit Chance. You can find gear which increases your critical hit rate by a percentage. You can think of this more or less like .5% enhanced damage after Dexterity has been applied. For example, if you have 1000 Dexterity, you can think of 1% critical hit as being worth another .5% increase in damage from your current level of damage. In this example, that would be worth about 5 Dexterity (1000 *.005). Of course, it is slightly more valuable than that as you have certain stats and abilities which proc based on critical hits. Additionally, if you manage to find gear which boosts critical hit bonus damage, this relationship would change. You can get your critical hit damage bonus up well over 100% through equipment. Imagine you dealt 150% critical bonus damage – that means each crit would now be 1.5% increase in damage, so each % crit would be worth about 1.5% of your total dexterity pool.
• Increased Hatred Regeneration. Many Demon Hunter pieces can increase your Hatred regeneration. You should know that default Hatred regeneration is 4 per second. Even low level gear has .4 bonus per second or even higher. Even though .4 Hatred may not sound like much, that is a 10% increase over baseline. Additionally, if you make a lot of use of low Hatred abilities like Multishot or Rapid Fire, you can actually build your set so that you never run out of Hatred.
• Increased Attack Speed. This is very common on Jewelry and weapons and is a great stat to pick up whenever it can be found. Increased attack speed is also gentle on the item budget; low-level rings seem to have 5% increased attack speed which is a huge DPS boost compared to some of the other available stats While faster attacks do drain your Hatred quicker, it also means you can regenerate Hatred faster with your Hatred building attacks.
• Damage Dealt is Converted to Life. Another useful thing to pick up is Damage Dealt is Converted to Life. You want to look for this on your jewelry or your weapon (it does not seem to appear on armor) and you want to get a high enough percent so that you do not need to rely solely on health globes. The effect of this stat is as it says; for each 1% of this stat you have, you gain 1 health every time you deal 100 damage. While this may not sound like much, consider stacking this up to 10% and using a big AoE spell like Multishot on a pack of enemies and dealing a few thousand damage per attack. This can quickly restore your health in no time and keep you alive while kiting, so be sure to get some of this stat.

While there are other secondary stats which may slightly improve the Demon Hunter’s damage, the ones listed above are the best ones. When it comes to farming, you want to be sure to stack Gold Find and Magic Find (depending on your goals) as well. For leveling up and maxing out damage, stick to the stats above.

 

Demon Hunter Recap Conclusion

For those looking for a replacement for the Amazon in Diablo 3, the Demon Hunter is your pick. While it does have some abilities which seem similar to the Assassin, this class does not appear to be a melee class and if any builds are viable they will all be centered on Grenades as a Hatred generator. If you are looking for a hard-hitting melee class aside from the Barbarian, you should definitely check out the Monk class, which is more similar in game play to the Assassin in my opinion

In order to max out your damage, max out your Dexterity and weapon damage as a priority. Be sure to get enough Vitality and damage-to-life conversion as you need to stay alive. Seek out +damage and increased attack speed on your jewelry. As you reach higher levels, mix in critical rating and hatred regeneration as your gear begins to get more stats on it.

Pick up Magic Find and Gold Find as it is convenient, but seek an even balance between bonus loot and killing speed, as you can definitely over-do the magic and gold find at higher levels. By following the recommendations of this Diablo 3 Demon Hunter stats guide, you can be sure you are using the right equipment for your class.

Tags: D3, Demon Hunter, Diablo 3, EGP, Eviscerated, Eviscerated Gaming

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2012 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Diablo 3, EGP, Eviscerated, Gaming, Podcasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.